FOR many, a key plank of the support for Brexit at the referendum was the impact of uncontrolled immigration into the UK.

Iain Duncan-Smith said 'UK spends about £4bn a year' on housing and social benefits to EU migrants (Image: getty)

Voters worried about the resulting negative impact on their access to public services provision in terms of housing, GP appointments, educational provision, social care and effects on jobs availability. It has long been an article of faith for supporters of free movement that all migration increases economic well being. However, studies apparently supporting this view have conflated the economic effects of skilled, better-educated and more highly-paid migrants with that of unskilled migrants.

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The UK spends about £4 billion a year providing housing and other social benefits to EU migrants.

Economists for Free Trade (EFT) research has shown that it is uncontrolled, unskilled migration that imposes costs on the UK’s public purse, as well as on local communities.

This research estimates that the cost in supporting EU unskilled migrants is about £3500 per year per adult migrant.

In effect, the taxpayer provides a wage subsidy of about 20 per cent to the average unskilled EU migrant.

Supporting EU migrants costs the UK about £3500 per year per adult (Image: getty)

There is no dispute about the positive impact of skilled labour in contributing to the UK economy.

Furthermore, these effects increase in areas of dense migrant population.

Local communities hosting large EU and non-EU immigrant populations face higher costs without compensation, as well as declining housing, health and educational standards.

For example, EFT research found that in a region like Leicester, which has the densest immigrant population in the UK, the burden of unskilled immigrants per head in the local community costs £287 annually, or about £6 per working week.

Thus, uncontrolled immigration is a key economic issue, never mind a political one.

An equally important aspect of the economic issue is that UK industry now has one of the poorest records for investment in training, technological innovation and automation.

Such has been the effect of uncontrolled migration in the UK that Centre for Social Justice research shows that only 15 per cent of those who start work in entry level jobs will progress past that level in their working lives.

Similar effects exist even amongst skilled jobs.

For example, the following chart shows how the dependency of the NHS on overseas doctors far outstrips similar economies in Europe.

The UK has the highest percentage of foreign-trained doctors of any European country – about three-times that of France, Germany, or Spain.

As for nurses, former MAC Chair, Sir David Metcalfe, said in March 2016: “There is no good reason why the supply of nurses cannot be sourced domestically. There seems to be an automatic presumption that non-EEA skilled migration provides the health and care sector with a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card”.

The MAC pointed out in 2016 that the shortageof nurses in England was closely linked to the decision to cut training places by almost afifth between 2009 and 2013.

Indeed, until 2014, over 30,000 UK applicants for nursingcourses were turned away annually, according to the Nursing Labour Market Review.

Another important aspect of this is, how can we justify taking healthcare staff from countries that may need them far more than we do?

The World Health Organisation pointed recently to a shortage of millions of healthcare workers worldwide.

This shortage was particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. That is why they convened a conference in Kampala in 2008 that called on richer countries to “give high priority and adequate funding to train and recruitsufficient health personnel from within their own country” (Kampala Declaration).

UK must 'train our own staff' to avoid depriving other nations of high quality personnel (Image: getty)

In Dublin last year, the Global Forum on Human Resources for Health emphasised the need for developing countries to retain their own healthcare workforces (Dublin Declaration).

A major part of the solution to these problems has to be to reduce this reliance and train our own people.

As the Royal College of Physicians has noted: “The long-term focus needs to be on developing the home grownhealthcare workforce. In 2013, the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) pointed to“the absence of a specific training pathway to produce middle-gradedoctors” in the UK.

The Prime Minister’s flawed deal leaves the UK in a very weak position in when we get to trade negotiations with Brussels.

Eurocrats will use a preferential immigration policy for EU citizens as a trade-off for concessions the UK seeks (President Macron has threatened to do just that to obtain further concessions).

That is why it stands; only by leaving the EU on WTO terms can the UK fully take back control of its borders and deal with these issues.

In taking back control of our migration policy we are also giving notice to industry that we will have to invest and train to a far greater degree than they have for some time.

The greatest benefit of leaving under No Deal is that our country can start to enjoy the benefits of Brexit from March 29th 2019, rather than being left in the BRINO (Brexit In Name Only) purgatory of Mrs May’s deal.

The British people have already waited for almost three years - they should not have to wait any longer.

From Economists for Free Trade report: ‘No Deal is the Best Deal for Britain’